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Pak No-Confidence Vote: Was Imran’s Tirade Against the West the Final Straw?

The Pakistani generals are believed to be deeply upset at the PM’s outburst over the Russia-Ukraine issue.

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Will Imran Khan, who is, with much justification, considered Pakistan’s ‘selected’ Prime Minister, soon earn the distinction of being the country’s first Head of Government to fall after 1957 through a vote of no-confidence? That year, Pakistan’s sixth Prime Minister, I I Chundrigar, was removed from office following a vote of no-confidence against him.

Now, 65 years later, the principal opposition parties – the Pakistan Muslim League (N), the Pakistan’s People’s Party and the Maulana Fazlur Rehman-led Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal – wish to inflict Chundrigar’s fate on the once-charismatic cricketer, who has failed to effectively manage the country since he became Prime Minister in August 2018. The opposition parties submitted a motion of no-confidence to the office of the Speaker of the National Assembly on 8 March.

Under Pakistan’s Constitution, the Speaker is obliged to summon the Assembly within 14 days “at such time and place as he thinks fit” if a demand to requisition the House has been made by one-fourth of its membership.

As that has been done in this case, the National Assembly will have to meet by 22 March 2, one day before the country will celebrate Pakistan Day on 23 March.

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Army as a 'Political Institution'

It is currently expected that dissidents in Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), the ruling party led by Imran Khan, will support the motion, leading to the Prime Minister’s fall. These dissidents owe loyalty to Jahangir Tareen, once Khan’s close confidant and even mentor, but now a bitter enemy. Aleem Khan, a major Punjab politician and PTI leader, has also fallen out with the Prime Minister and will compel his followers in the Assembly to vote against Khan. Without the dissidents’ support, the no-confidence motion will fail. Hence, Tareen and Aleem Khan would be vital players in Pakistan’s current political scene.

Far more important, however, would be the attitude of the Pakistan army. For the record, the army has always maintained that it is not involved in politics. At the media briefing on10 March by Major General Babar Iftikhar, Director-General of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Public Relations, a journalist remarked that the political situation was connected with national defence and also noted that Imran Khan had said that the army was with him. In response, Babar Iftikhar reminded the media that at his last press conference he had said that the army has nothing to do with politics and cautioned that there should be no unnecessary discussion on this.

Babar’s protestation is hardly credible. The fact is that the army is not just a professional force, but also a ‘political’ institution in Pakistan. Its animus to some political leaders, for instance, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, is well-known.

It did everything to trouble him after he won the election in 2013. It also did all it could to support Imran Khan’s victory and Nawaz Sharif’s defeat in the 2018 election. Hence, Khan is disparagingly called ‘selected’. However, it is now believed that the generals are fed up with his ineptitude and his inability to temper his public statements at critical times, such as now, during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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The Controversial Moscow Visit

Pakistan’s ties with Russia have been turbulent and generally negative, interspersed with somewhat warm periods. For the past decade, they have steadily gained ground with a congruity in views on Afghanistan. Both Russia and Pakistan also have an alignment with China. In this context, Pakistan greatly looked forward to Imran Khan’s visit to Moscow which was scheduled for 23 and 24 February. It is also noteworthy that Khan was the third Pakistani leader to visit Russia. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto did so twice, as President in 1972 and as Prime Minister in 1974. After a hiatus of 25 years, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif went to Russia in April 1999.

The Moscow visit dates put Pakistan between a rock and a hard place. This was especially so because Russian President Vladimir Putin had accepted Donetsk and Luhansk as independent countries on 21 February. That was condemned by the West, which had also been warning for weeks of an imminent Russian attack on Ukraine. Caution demanded a postponement of the visit, even if it would have disappointed Russia. However, Khan, after consulting former diplomats and running it by the army, decided to go ahead with the visit.

He was in Moscow when Putin invaded Russia.

The optics of Khan meeting Putin and adhering to the protocol of an official visit infuriated Western countries. Khan’s homilies of Ukraine and Russia settling their differences did not cut any ice with the West.

In an extraordinary move, a group of envoys of the European Union (EU) and some 20 countries, including France, Germany, Britain, Canada, Australia and Japan, urged Pakistan, through a joint statement, to condemn Russia during the UN General Assembly debate on Ukraine. On its part, Pakistan had decided not to participate in the debate or take sides.

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Imran's 'Unbecoming' Response to Envoys

The Pakistan Foreign Ministry conveyed its unhappiness at such collective pressure being brought to bear on it. It reminded the group of ambassadors in a meeting that this “was not the way diplomacy should be practised”.

There, the matter should have been put to rest, or, at most, instructions should have gone to concerned Pakistani envoys to make their country’s displeasure known to their hosts.

However, Imran Khan decided to intervene. At a public meeting, he asked the foreign envoys, “Are we slaves and [should we] act according to your wishes?” He also asked them whether their countries had ever criticised Indian actions in Jammu & Kashmir or severed trade relations with India?

He went on to assert that Pakistan had paid a very high price for his predecessors agreeing to join NATO’s war in Afghanistan.

Imran Khan forgot that his direct response to the envoys was not in keeping with his stature nor politic in the prevailing Russia-NATO standoff on Ukraine.

The Pakistani generals are believed to be deeply upset at Imran Khan’s outburst. This was one more proof of his incapacity to handle sensitive issues with subtlety and finesse. There can be little doubt that the NATO countries would have, especially after Khan’s theatrics, reminded the army of Pakistan’s economic vulnerabilities for which it needs their help; neither China nor the Saudis can really help with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as the West can. Besides, Pakistan is not out of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list as yet. It must always be borne in mind that on crucial issues for the West, the Pakistani army is an interlocutor, not the political leadership, though the ministers may be kept in the loop.

With all of Khan’s missteps, the stars are not favourably aligned for him. But ultimately, the army will have to take a final call on the wisdom of political change at a time of grave external challenges and the economic distress, which will be exacerbated by the Ukraine war. Should it ultimately decide to play safe to avoid political change at the current stage, Khan may still get some reprieve. But he is in danger and may not survive the no-confidence vote.

(The writer is a former Secretary [West], Ministry of External Affairs. He can be reached @VivekKatju. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)

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